181–190 of 268 posts
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Reportedly that’s the answer they got in focus groups when they tried to figure out why it failed. 4 > 3.
So why didn't they start selling 1/5 pounders?
Fifta-Pounder?
Fifth-Pounder?
Five-Pounder?
For all we know, marketing vetoed it cause they were lazy.
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FWIW, TurboTax has a C# method ("IsProductActivationRequired()" or something like that) you can overwrite to 'return false' with tools like dnSpy.
There's a desktop version? Does it offer the same as the site?
> Does it offer the same as the site?
Typically more, in fact.
Still probably a rip-off compared to other places.
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> Do you have any reason to believe that? just from my personal experiences... either way, the IRS has that info, if they assume people are honest... not sure why it isn't public.
Well, they might have all the info sometimes but we don't know how often or if they even do. How would the IRS know if they know everything? What evidence do they have of absence? There are 36 countries that manage to do return-free taxes. They seem to have a base rate that covers most (~64% in the UK) people. The US tax code is way more complicated than one base rate for everyone. It's unclear to me how anything oth…
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People who live paycheck to paycheck are very good at budgeting because they have to do it to survive, they don't need any more pressure. If anything it's richer people that could use a little prodding, but either way we don't need the government to be withholding extra money from people it thinks might have bad habits. > they get a big paycheck once a year to pay off whatever If you have something big to pay off, yo…
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Not sure I'm explaining that properly, but it was the sort of math I encountered dealing with such individuals.
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https://www.irs.gov/about-irs/strategic-plan/direct-file Not to be confused with IRS Free File
Hah, saw that you edited the url. These government naming schemes are designed to fail. Why do they pick these absolute terms like "free" when there will clearly be some new thing that will be better? I'm waiting for the next version of REAL id, a realer id.
In all seriousness though, Free File pretty much does what it says on the tin (allows low-income taxpayers to file for free); it has existed since 2003; and it has been pretty successful all things considered (Intuit and H&R Block's best efforts notwithstanding). I think it's a reasonable name.
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Fractions are just division. When kids learn division, it's about splitting into equal groups. Fractions are a bit different though - you're splitting a single thing into equal chunks. Hence, slices of pie. Multiplying by 1/5 is really dividing by 5. Introduce that first. We already know how to do this. You split your 1/3 slice into 5 equal slices. Do the same to the other 2/3 slices, count all the slices, and you ha…
There's a difference in type of thinking in moving from operations on numbers (basic whole number math) to operations-on-operations-on-numbers (anything with fractions). Suddenly, you need to begin to understand the rules around operators, sequencing, and what operations are legal and illegal. Absent that understanding, even... 1/4 x 2/5 ... gets very complicated trying to reason with physical analogs. So it's the po…
Actually I think we do very little addition of fractions later in math. But it is a concept that confuses the multiplication or division.
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Well, they might have all the info sometimes but we don't know how often or if they even do. How would the IRS know if they know everything? What evidence do they have of absence? There are 36 countries that manage to do return-free taxes. They seem to have a base rate that covers most (~64% in the UK) people. The US tax code is way more complicated than one base rate for everyone. It's unclear to me how anything oth…
In the UK, payroll and savings income is taxed at source and around 80-85% of people don't need to complete a tax return. You only need to complete one if you have other income, if you're self-employed with over £1000 revenue, had capital gains over £6000, or earn over £100,000. Almost everyone completes these online, and you can do it directly on the government site. For simple cases that only takes a few minutes. I…
Edit: I looked it up.
Yes, the UK has capital gains taxes and they must be calculated by the taxpayer.
https://www.gov.uk/capital-gains-tax/reporting-and-paying-ca...
There are also deductions for savings and dividends. Those deductions look a lot like the US deductions. They also (sometimes?) have to be calculated by the taxpayer.
Finally, something is being done. Paying taxes should be free for most people. Especially if you only have to deal with the standard deductions.
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Half of the allure of turbo tax is figuring out if the standard deduction is more or less favorable than itemized. Maybe the IRS should start by building a tool that points you in the right direction before it tries to build a TurboTax clone.
I assume that information exists. It's mostly just totaling up some numbers. I know these days, for me, standard deduction works unless I have some outlier charitable/investment thing going on which I'm going to talk to my accountant about anyway. I assume there are other alternate energy credits and the like but not sure how they work and again aren't in play for most people in a given year.
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IDK, I did fine with them and find thinking in them natural (I think of fractional division as division, in fact, though I certainly understand the multiplication analogy); I’ve just known enough people who lost track of math at fractions that I doubt it’s coincidence. I’m not saying I don’t get it, I’m saying others have told me that they found the explanations and instructions they were given nonsensical.
Have you tried dumping all the sockets out of a socket set and putting them back in order? Do you find it's easier to order the metric ones than the imperial ones which have a lot of different denominators on adjacent sizes? I certainly do but I'm not American so maybe it's my background limiting me.